<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/no-batteries-no-flexibility-spain-could-have-avoided-blackout-with-lessons-learned-in-south-australia/>
"One of the world’s leading experts in battery storage and demand flexibility
says that Spain could have avoided its massive blackout this week if it had
taken note of the lessons learned nearly a decade ago in South Australia.
As Spanish consumers – from the king all the way down to consumers left in the
dark or stuck in lifts and trains – seek answers for the extraordinary events
on Monday, more energy experts are pointing out that Spain’s grid was left
vulnerable by its old-school thinking about centralised and supply-side
control.
Some are pointing to the lessons learned from the “system black” in South
Australia in 2016, which led to a wholesale rethink about the ways grid are
managed, and are able to respond to the type of major disruptions seen in Spain
and Portugal.
“Two blackouts, one root cause,” wrote Alex Schoch, the head of demand
flexibility at Octopus Energy, now the biggest energy retailer in the UK and
which is partly owned by Australia’s Origin Energy. “Spain 2025 (was) a grid
starved of flexibility.”
Schoch has some deep insight into this. Before his current role as head of
demand flexibility in the UK, and advising the UK market operator on
transmission issues, Schoch was head of Tesla Energy’s global operations for
three years from 2016 and 2019.
In that role, he played a key role in making sure the hardware and the know-how
was delivered for the original “Tesla big battery” at Hornsdale that was built
– as promised by CEO Elon Musk – in South Australia in less than 100 days.
The Tesla battery was a major part of the response to the South Australia
blackout, and its success in helping mitigate the impacts of major disruptions
such as a coal generator outages, or the loss of a transmission lines, has led
to Australian building a massive portfolio of grid scale batteries.
That portfolio already stands at more than 5 GW and 10 GWh, in operation or
commissioning, and will likely double again in the coming year. But, as
Renew
Economy pointed out on Tuesday, Spain has virtually no battery storage to
speak of."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
